Those Were The Days

My early television viewing involved popular sitcoms. In the 50s, The Honeymooners featured blue-collar bus driver Ralph Kramden whose neighbor, Ed Norton, worked in a sewer. Ralph was the sad sack and Ed provided comic relief. Most of their antics were staged in the Kramden apartment. Years later, (1989-1998) in another similar sitcom, Jerry Seinfeld lived in a small apartment and had Kramer as his crazy neighbor.

Sandwiched between these two comic gems was All in the Family whose eight-year run started in 1971. The two main characters who played against one another were Archie Bunker and Michael Stivic, aka Meathead. Archie was a right-wing bigot and Meathead was a Polish-American hippie. The show was inspired by the successful British sitcom, Till Death Do Us Part, featuring a white working-class racist with anti-socialist views.

Archie and Edith

Oddly, all three of these American classics were set in New York. While all of these comedies are ranked at the top of their genre, All in the Family is regarded as one of the greatest television comedy series of all time. Archie Bunker represented the conservative “Greatest Generation” and Meathead was from the liberal “Baby Boomers.” Archie was the loveable bigot whose racism and various prejudices were less hateful and more his reaction to societal changes that made him uncomfortable.

All in the Family made its television debut on CBS which was trying to diversify its rural comedy programming featuring Mayberry RFD (Andy Griffith), The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres. All in the Family was the first major American series to be videotaped in front of a live studio audience as most sitcoms prior to AITF were single-camera shows with a laugh track and no live audience. Often compared to The Honeymooners filmed before a live television audience, AITF had a similar look and feel. Ralph Kramden and Archie Bunker were both loveable flawed characters.

While most of us couldn’t fathom anyone other than Carroll O’Conner in the role of Archie, the first offer to play Archie went to Mickey Rooney who turned it down as too controversial. A Black family, the Jeffersons, moves in next door and we meet George Jefferson who is a Black version of Archie.

All in the Family seems like a lifetime ago. It was popular back when we could still find humor in the absurdity of bigotry. Today such bigotry is very much mainstream, and I fear too few would find the humor in any similar updated offering. Hateful rhetoric now dominates the news. Who could have foreseen back then that we would elect a slightly more educated but certainly no more intelligent person to lead our country. For those of you now picturing Joe Biden in that position, that is your right. For those of you who correctly realize that we are talking about Donald J. Trump, consider yourselves lucky to be functioning on a higher plane than our former president.

For those of you longing for a time when we could comfortably laugh at a bigoted racist who was in the minority, just realize,

Those Were The Days.

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played

songs that made the hit parade

Guys like me we had it made

Those were the days

Didn't need no welfare state

ev'rybody pulled his weight

gee our old LaSalle ran great

Those were the days

And you knew who you were then

girls were girls and men were men

Mister we could use a man

like Herbert Hoover again

People seemed to be content

fifty dollars paid the rent

freaks were in a circus tent

Those were the days

Take a little Sunday spin

go to watch the Dodgers win

Have yourself a dandy day

that cost you under a fin

Hair was short and skirts were long

Kate Smith really sold a song

I don't know just what went wrong

those were the days